


The Women's War

by Laurentia



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-11
Updated: 2014-03-11
Packaged: 2018-10-02 17:18:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10223249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laurentia/pseuds/Laurentia
Summary: Above and below stairs, the women of Downton's first casualties of war.





	1. Upstairs

As far as Sybil is concerned the first casualty of war is her heart when Branson leaves. It is without much preamble. He's driving her to the dressmakers again (their Mother had insisted that they purchase a full seasons worth of clothing just in case the war lasted) and this time she has strict instructions to only buy things with a skirt – and he just mentions that next Monday he will be heading off to war. She cries delicately with the dignity of a young girl hearing about another young man that may be in danger when he tells her. Later that night she sobs into her pillow with the anguish of a woman losing her lover to forces beyond her control. She kisses his cheek on the day that he leaves with the others from downstairs and, for once, her Mother does nothing but hold her tightly.

_When everything is over, she has purposefully kept herself free. It's not as though there are hundreds of young men around anyway, not like there were for Mary. She scours the lists of the dead, trying desperately to find his name but she never finds it – eventually it occurs to her that she is reading the lists of British dead and the Irish one might be more useful but it still doesn't yield any results. In 1920 she finally asks Carson for Branson's references, family address, previous employers, anything that might give her a clue and she quickly manages to find his Mother. He's dead. He died quite late which she thinks is worse than anything quite frankly, but he is dead and she has waited all these years to find out._

Similarly Mary's first casualty is Matthew, although his situation in life is such that he is unlikely to see too much front line action and if Mary only knew how much her little sister's heart was breaking over her own beloved not being given similar treatment then she might have considered herself rather bless. Only _might_ though. Mary was, after all, a mostly selfish creature. And Mary would have been the first to tell anyone this.

_He comes back. Of course he does, he has spent most of the war in an office- he has one or two stories to tell about France but none of them think he has suffered the kind of things that other returning young men have, even Thomas seems more of a romantic hero. But to Mary he may as well have won the war all by himself. She kisses him once when he arrives home, twice when he returns to the cottage with his Mother, and she doesn't stop when they're alone. They do marry. Eventually, but still, and both of them pray that their children will never have to endure a war like this one._

Edith's first is Sir Anthony Strallen. She loses his affection on the day that she finds out about the war. She loses his presence and the chance of rekindling his fondness when he heads down to the war office to do his duty to his country. She admires him for this nobility and feels like she could loves him for it one day. She loses him for good when he is shot in his office by a German sympathiser before the first year of the war is over.

_She does marry in the end. She doesn't love him, but then she never really loved Sir Anthony, however she doesn't even have the same affection for Henry Diggory. He's kind and much younger than Sir Anthony and he thinks she's beautiful. She supposes that this last belief of his is helped by the fact that Mary spends all her time thinking about Matthew and Sybil is continually red faced and either sitting in the car for no good reason or visiting their old housemaid, but she still enjoys being thought beautiful. She has always nurtured a hope, mostly because she was always told that she resembled her Aunt as a baby, that her hair might become a rustier red, like her Aunt's, that her freckly skin might become creamier, that her voice might become honeyed, that her independent spirit might kick it, that people might revere her, that her eyes would sparkles that blue, but as they haven't so far she decides to cut her loses and marry Diggory. He knows none of her family beforehand. She mentions Sir Anthony at table once and her Aunt recalls meeting him when she first came out and the older members of the family share significant glances and Edith twists inside. She marries Diggory._

Cora's first loss, and for some time she feels simply dreadful about her feelings but she keeps it to herself so at least she did the _proper_ thing, is her comfortable life when Rosamund moves in. At first it's a fortnight, but it stretches into two months and after a brief visit to London to collect more belongings it becomes the rest of the war. Rosamund is a woman that Cora finds endearing and most admirable, but only in small doses; she is independent, so getting her to follow the routine at Downton is next to impossible; she is opinionated and the girls, particularly Sybil, are rather impressionable and Cora would prefer her sister-in-law to display more tact; but worst of all, she, like Violet, is accustomed to running her own house. By 1915 Cora checks with the cook three times a day to make sure nothing has been changed on the menu and by 1916 only Anna knows how Rosamund's likes her bed made. The disruption to her household would be nothing though if her daughters would only smile once in a while. She understands Mary's distress. She has suspicions over Sybil's that she knows she will never mention to her husband. But Edith really is being sour for no reason and Cora feels only a modicum of guilt that she usually seats her middle daughter the furthest away from herself. She thinks of trivial things like Rosamund's invasion and the seating plans rather than thinking of what her first loss really was. It was before she found out about the war of course but as far as she is concerned it is still the first loss.

_She finally,_ finally _, allows her Mother to visit after the war. Mostly it is to convince her Mother that none of them have been blown up in Yorkshire: secretly part of her relishes both the thought of her own Mother clashing with Robert's and that Rosamund is guaranteed to move out in light of an American invasion (her Mother brings her Aunt and Uncle and two cousins – Cora finds it rather invigorating but her husband and children do not share the sentiment, although she can bear their teasing as it goes along with high-spirits). She is disappointed on both counts though. Violet nearly strains herself being pleasant and though Rosamund finally goes back to London, unfortunately she takes Cora's Widowed Cousin Hector with her. There is scandal. Robert is appalled. Violet hunts her daughter with letters. Her Aunt Madeline is distraught. Mary and Sybil think their Aunt is terribly daring and exciting and, for reasons beyond her, Edith looks graver than ever. Cora consoles everyone by day but laughs to herself at night. She writes to Rosamund with more affection than she has felt in thirty years and warns her of what Violet is doing next. Her sister-in-law is no longer an ally, she is a friend._

Rosamund's first casualty is actually by her own hands. In an act of pure selflessness that she thinks is rather bravely born she goes to the nearest VAD hospital and offers them her lovely house in Eaton Square, that she had spent so long making perfect, as a convalescence home for the injured soldiers. On her last night there she gathers the servants, gives them a year's wages (because like her brother she believes herself to be a kind member of the aristocracy) and tells them that if they haven't found employment by that time then they may come to her for more money. She trusts them enough not to take advantage of her. She takes her young (inexperienced, but cheap, and Rosamund feels rather benevolent for employing her) ladies maid with her to Downton and trusts that her brother and his odd wife will be hospitable. She never tells them why she can't go home just yet.

_The very day armistice breaks out she begins searching for a new house in London. Living under her brother's house rules had been difficult and seeing her Mother nearly every day had been a childhood experience she had not wanted to repeat. Hector arrives. He's recently widowed and she's been without a husband for eight years now. The girls are too young to understand the yearning in her heart and body, Cora has never been without a husband and her Mother seemed too austere a creature to have ever felt passion. Oddly it is Cousin Isobel who notices her glances and tries to advise her. It is terribly sweet of her of course but Rosamund does so hate meddlers._

Isobel loses her son overnight. His elevation could not take him from her influence, nor could Lady Mary Crawley but a war begun by strangers takes him further than he has ever been. She mourns his absence but knows in her heart that he will come back. He is the first loss but not the only. She volunteers as a Nurse again, of course she does, how could she have done anything else after all? Sybil joins her immediately and she is unsurprised. Four months later, and shocking her more than the announcement of war ever could, Mary joins them. Between the three of them they see more than their fair share of death but do all that they can to save the men and Isobel comforts herself with the thought that somewhere in France there were other women doing the same who might save her son. She entertains the idea that Mary might be doing the same but her motives seem purer; instead she sees her own mirrored devotion in Sybil.

_When he comes back she is glad that at long last he and Mary do get married, but she can never shake away the feeling that, though he is back with her, he is still gone. Her work has given her a greater experience in wounds and disease and though she rejoices at the advancement of some cures a small part of her heart pangs every time she sees a young man with a limp or a missing limb. So she carries on being a nurse as long as she is able, amused that society has changed enough that the mother of the prospective Earl of Grantham is allowed to do such menial work as nursing when things are not as critical as they had been in previous years. By the mid-1920s there is nobody left who really objects to her work and sometimes Mary even joins her, so perhaps whilst her grasp on her son has slipped a little, she has gained something._

Violet's first, or at least the first thing she truly notices as an inconvenience occurs in 1916 and it is the frequency with which she begins to find Moseley Senior crying. It seems quite ridiculous at first but after some subtle enquiries to her son, and some blunt responses from her daughter, she discovers that Moseley, whom she had always found rather charming in his way, had been killed on the front. She knows enough to know that she cannot understand the depth of his sorrow. Her second child, another girl, had been stillborn, but she had rallied as one did and held her living daughter tight to her. This was a different kind of grief, this was a child that had been killed by another person.

_The war leaves her tired. She lost very little really but the world seems greyer and nothing reminds her of her youth anymore, except perhaps for Mary and occasionally Sybil._

_She passes away at Downton in 1924, pleased that she has done her duty and that she will not have to see the world change further._


	2. Downstairs

Anna doesn't cry when Bates goes away. She is wary of showing her feelings and promises herself she won't cry – Anna has always been a creature of her word and her character doesn't change for this – and so she controls her emotions and is able to give him a farewell that on the surface even the sharpest tongue wouldn't find anything to comment on. But inside she breaks and is flooded with tears. Normally she would be sensible enough to reason that he is safe, he's going to be with Lord Grantham after all and _he'll_ be behind a desk. Really, she has much less to worry herself with than Daisy or Lady Mary, or even Miss O'Brien, but then she doesn't think any of them love the men they're missing in the way she does. She carries on, being a bastion of strength for most but all the while wondering whether she should have made more of a fuss over him. In the end she'd given William a more emotional farewell, but he was like a little brother and that was acceptable – whatever else John Bates might have been to her, a brother was not one of them.

_After the war he does come home with Lord Grantham and he resumes his position as valet immediately. So many people are injured after the war that his lameness is quite a small thing by comparison; it's also been so many years since he last saw Vera that the courts will give him a divorce. Liberation in the wake of the war clears the way for Anna and Bates – the only fly in the ointment is that Anna is no longer there. In 1916 Anna leaves Downton Abbey for London and the prospect of a better life, in the end the opportunities opening up for young and clever women were too tempting to ignore and Gwen had written to her with an offer of sharing a flat. The decision is obvious, she can spend god knows how long waiting for her life to begin, or she can go out and make it happen._

Gwen loses her sheer joy. Overnight her dreams are granted and they cannot be crushed by anything, even if it is a war. The silly new device in Mr Carson's pantry had looked daunting and ridiculous to begin with, but, she reasons, she supposes a typewriter must have looked the same to begin with too and Gwen is not one to pass ignore change. The evening war breaks out everybody is distracted and between carrying trays back inside after the garden party – somehow people hadn't been in the mood for ice-cream – and turning down Lady Edith's bed, Gwen manages to use to phone to contact her new employer. She is pleased with her competence, it _must_ bode well and Mr Bromwich seems pleasantly surprised she's speaking to him. She asks nervously whether he still wants her and he is silent for a moment and her heart breaks: then he says of course and can she start in a week. She leaves Downton before any of the men.

_The war gives him better business than even Mr Bromwich anticipated and after a few years of installing telephones in every military building and so many more homes wanting them, his company is worth a considerably amount and he is a kindly enough man not to forget that he wasn't alone. Others joined once it looked like there was a profit to be made but he doesn't forget that Gwen was there before, when people still turned their noses up at the new idea. Gwen is not foolish enough to believe that her newfound wealth could ever amount to the money lavished by her former employers, but when Lady Sybil comes for tea she has china of her own, fine clothes that she bought herself (even if she still sometimes wears the suit Sybil gave her) and she curtsies to no one. She's where she wants to be._

Daisy lets herself down again once more before William leaves for war. Thomas had left a few weeks before and try as she might to tell herself that he's bad, she can't help but like him. Even after he says what he says about William's mother and her poor Ladyship she can't help but like him because he made her feel things inside that no one ever had before and you never forget your first love do you? Even if he wasn't very good. Before Thomas leaves though, before she forgets about him for good and focuses on William and the fact that he's a better man who doesn't make her squirm as much, but doesn't make her cry either, she does something silly. Daisy knits a scarf as fast as she can before the men all go away – she stays up half the night to do it and in the end has to ask one of the maids to help her – and when it comes to it she stitches Thomas' name on it instead of William's. She promises to send William one as soon as she can and he nods and gives her a small smile but she can tell he's disappointed.

_William doesn't come back. Daisy always believed he would even if no one else in the house expressed their surprise when after the war the easily led lad who was so dedicated to his work and so eager to please, decides not to re-enter service. He's done well in the army and been lucky, shown adeptness with the horses that they all knew he had but dismissed as a foolish inclination of a footman so daft he's got ideas below his station, and he's with the horses all the time, transporting food and munitions to the front. It's important and when he writes to her Daisy is so proud that he likes her and he's so brave, but when the war ends William gets a job at a horse track and doesn't come back. She cries when she realises all the letters have come to nothing really, he doesn't love her and she knows in her heart of hearts that she never really loved him either but he was safe. He was so different to Thomas and any of the other men she knew but he's still a let-down in the end._

Mrs Patmore is aware before she has even left London and returned triumphantly to Downton to regain her place as cook over Mrs Bird that the operation may not be the end of things. She knew with absolute certainly only a few months before that she would soon be blind but then that particular disaster was averted and another one loomed on the horizon. A disaster that was bigger than anything any of them could ever conceive. The Titanic suddenly seems like rather small potatoes compared to this war and not one of them can fool themselves into thinking anything will ever be easy again. But they will persevere; she's an expert at it now – if it didn't come from the long years of being a cook then her recent troubles have made her so.

_By 1919 her sight is going again. Things do not seem as bleak this time, she knows as well as anyone that the advances in medicine during war mean that her sight stands more of a chance of surviving. There is hope and encouragement and the sense of despair she felt last time is not present – the rest of the staff are less concerned too, Mrs Hughes tells her not to go getting melodramatic again, Miss O'Brien rolls her eyes but still hands her things when she asks for them, and Daisy, though morose, isn't nearly as useless as she once was. It doesn't make any difference though because by 1921 she is blind._

O'Brien tries to ignore how lonely she feels now. She doesn't really believe that she and Thomas were friends but they were allies and in a house that loathed the pair of them it was nice to be the lesser of the two evils. After he left she barely speaks for the first month. Everything she says is frowned upon by someone (usually Anna, she noted with a considerable amount of dislike) and upstairs she feels suffocated – upstairs they actually seem to be rather grateful for her presence and the Countess can't do without her, so much so that she seems to have forgotten that there was a time when her lady's maid's days were numbered. She wishes they still were. Wishes his lordship would show her the door, wishes she could run away from Downton forever and do something helpful for the war. Most of all she wishes that she could have told Thomas the secret that eats her soul before he left – he'll probably die anyway so it's not like he could use it against her. She knows he wouldn't though.

_The Countess still held her hand sometimes and it doesn't turn her stomach the way it used to. It's practically a Catholic punishment, she supposes, thinking back to her upbringing with the nuns, she desperately wanted to leave Downton and put what she had done from her mind forever, but instead her very presence soothes her victim and she can never leave. She can't cause this woman more distress so she thinks about her actions every single bloody day and knows that it's her punishment to stay. After the war it got better though. The heir had returned unscathed and had wed Lady Mary so the Countess was happy again; most of the men returned downstairs so, tinged with a remembrance of those not with them, there was laughter. Thomas came back and she was able to confess. After all the things he has seen it seems like nothing to him now and he shrugs it off and hands her a French cigarette – she finds absolution in the flame._

Mrs Hughes takes control the moment the announcement occurs and within half an hour she has all of the guests settled with a stiff drink. An hour after that those that are leaving have gone and the rest have been furnished with tea and cakes – Mrs Patmore, though Elsie will never admit it, is quite right and there's nothing to make you hungry like grief and bad news. By evening it's as though the garden was for display only and no one had ever set foot in it: for other's it may be food, but for her it's work. Work soothes her and the simplicity of focussing upon the next task in hand, then the next, then the next, keeps Elsie sane for those first few days. Things will become harder but she knows a strong work ethic will keep her going, it's all she has after all, and as long as Downton stands then she will not despair. There will always be something to do, a maid to guide, a quarrel to settle, a local boy to chase away from the door and, god willing, a family to serve.

_There IS a family to serve after the war and Elsie goes on serving them. There's a wedding or two, a baby after a while, but none of them truly change and for this she is grateful. War usually meant change and the one thing Elsie Hughes despised was change as it invariably led to disruption: and disruption was only to be born if it kept her busy long enough not to notice that things had changed without her realising. The family stay the same – but somehow, and right under her nose, her staff have changed. They're different people, some quite literally and others have altered so irrevocably she wonders how they can ever be the people they once were._

_Anna and Gwen have gone, replaced by girls younger, sillier and somehow, not quite right. There's a quiet and oddly impressive man sat in the corner of the room that used to be the first footman. The second is long gone and so is the chauffeur. Daisy moves deftly, not hurried and harassed, just assured and Mrs Patmore doesn't shout anymore. Even O'Brien manages a small smile on the stairs these days and it finally occurs to Elsie that she and Mr Carson are the only ones left who have not changed. She has a feeling this does not bode well and wonders how long it will be before the world gallops swiftly away from the pair of them._

_She wonders how long her work ethic will sustain her now and whether Joe Burns is still in need of a wife. If everyone else has changed, then perhaps it's not too late for her._

End.


End file.
